Single Payer Healthcare Reform

“In this passionate and timely study, Lindy Hern brings together decades of personal involvement in the campaign for national health insurance with a scholar’s immersion in social movement theory. This work should be read by all interested in the history of the campaign for Medicare for All, and by all looking to understand movements for social change.”

—Gerald Friedman, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA

Never before has the single-payer community of activists had such a rich accounting of the people who are driving the movement ever closer to the day when every person in America has access to truly high quality care without financial barriers.”

—Donna Smith, Advisory Board Chair and former Executive Director of Progressive Democrats of America, former National Organizer for National Nurses United, and star of the Michael Moore film SiCKO

Lindy Hern’s inspiring analysis of the making of grass-roots history provides us with a democratic vision of America to last through troubled times.”

—Clarence Y. H. Lo, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Missouri, USA

The recent rise of “Medicare for All” in American political discourse was many years in the making. Behind this rise is a movement composed of grassroots activists and organizations that have been working for more than three decades to achieve the goal of establishing a single-payer healthcare system in the United States. In the past decade, the Single Payer Movement has grown and garnered more public and political support than ever before. This relative success cannot be attributed to any one political figure or political era. The story of how this happened, and how it is tied to a turn against establishment politics on both the left and right, as well as the rise of outsider politicians such as Senator Bernie Sanders, takes place during the Clinton, G.W. Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations. During each of these eras, activists experienced shifting opportunities that they interpreted through the telling of stories. These narratives of opportunity encouraged participation in particular forms of grassroots mobilization, which then affected the outcome of each era. This has had lasting effects on the development of healthcare policy in the United States.

Lindy S.F. Hern is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Hawaii, USA.